The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-09-30
The Best Way of Destroying Railroad

Gen. Slocum, in his account of Sherman's
march through the Carolinas, i'll the Cen
tary for October, touches upon the burning
of Columbia, which he surmises was due to
the too free use of whisky, and the respon
sibility of which should not be charged to
Sherman. In his article he gives these sue
cinct directions as to the destruction of a
railroad in time of war:
"a knowledge of the art of building rail-
roads is certainly of more value TO a coun-
try than that of the best means of destroy
ing them; but at this particular time the
destruction seemed necessary, and the time
may again come when such work will be
necessary Lest the most effectual and ex-
peditious method of destroying railroad
tracks should become one of tho lost arts, |
will here give few rules for the guidance
of officers who may in future be charged
with this important duty. 1t should be re-
membered that these rules are the result of
long experience and close observation. A
detail of men to do the work should be made
on the evening before operations are to COM
mence. The number to be detailed being,
of course, dependent upon the amount of
werk to be done, | estimate that one thou
sand men can easily destroy about five miles
of track per day, and do it thoroughly. Be
fore going out in the morning the men
should be supplied with good breakfast,
for it has been discovered that soldiers are
more efficient at this work, as well as on the
battlefield, when their stomachs are full
than when they are empty. The question
as to the food to be given the men for break
fast is not important, but | suggest roast
turkeys, chickens, fresh eggs and coffee, for
the reason that in an enemys country such
a breakfast will cause no unpleasantness
between the commisSary and the soldiers,
inasmuch as the eommissary will only be
required to provide the coffee. In fact, it
has been discovered that an army moving
through hostile but fertile country, having
an efficient corps of foragers (yulgarly known
in our army as bummers), requires but few
articles of food, such as hard tack, coffee,
SALT pepper and sugar. Your detail should
be divided into three sections of about equal
numbers. | will suppose the detail to con-
! sist of three thousand men. The first thing
to be done is to reverse the relative positions
of the ties and iron rails, placing the ties up
and the rails under them. To do this, Sec
| tion No. l, consisting of one thousand men,
is distributed along one side of the track,
one man at the end of each tie. At given
| signal each man seiZes tie, lifts it gently
| till it assumes vertical position, and then
| at another signal pushes it forward SO that
when it falls the ties will be over the rails
Then each man loosens his tie from the rail-
This done, Section No. moves forward to
| another portion of the road, and Section
No. advances and is distributed along the
portion of the road recently occupied by
Section No. /. The duty of the second sec
ton is to collect the ties, place them in piles
of about thirty ties each-place the rails on
top of these piles, the centric of each rail
being over the centre of the pile, and then
set fire to the ties. Section No. then fol-
| lows No. /. AS soon as the rails are sutti-
GENTLY heated, Section No. 3 takes the place
of No g and upon this devolves the most
important duty, viz. the effectllal destruc-
ton of the rail. This section should be in
command of an efficient officer, who will
see that the work is not sighted. Unless
closely watched soldiers will content them
selves with simply bending the rails around
trees. This should never be permitted. A
rail which is simply bent can easily be re-
stored to its original shape. No rail should
be regarded as properly treated till it has
assumed the shape of a doughnut; it must
not only be bent but twisted. To do the
twisting Poe's railroad hooks are necessary
for it has been found that the soldiers will
not seize the hot iron bare handed. This
however, is the only thing looking toward
the destruction of property which l ever
knew man i'll Sherman's army to decline
doing. With Poe's hooks double twist car
be given TO rail which precludes all hope
of restoring it to its former shape except by
recasting."